1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and method for displaying an activity map; more particularly, to a device and method for display of activity in a multi-perspective representation of an environment, one including tangible cues linking the representation of each perspective.
2. Background of the Invention
Technology brings people together in the sense that individuals are connected to one another through networks of cellular phones, pagers, personal digital assistants, computers, etc. In particular, in the area of online interaction, there are several efforts working towards creating a computer interface capable of displaying intangible qualities typically associated with live interaction. For example, MICROSOFT's® hierarchical file system interface, Babble, usage summaries for web sites, and The Palace (www.thepalace.com). These systems include elements which relate to attributes normally associated with a physical interaction. For example, by posting the number of visitors to a web site (e.g., usage summaries), a consumer can have a feeling of belonging to a larger group of people interested in that web site. These and other systems are described below.
FTP allows online users to have access to a collection of documents; one or more users being authorized to add documents to the collection. Although a user may access data provided via FTP, the user is not provided with any way to see what other users are doing. Only the current data is available. (See Ed Krol, The Whole Internet Catalog. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Sebastopol, Calif. 1992.)
NNTP or network news, provides a venue in which users can asynchronously post messages and responses into administered news groups (i.e., predefined groups of messages which are meant to relate to specified topics, e.g., all articles in alt.sport.soccer should deal with soccer). Here again, a user is only able to see the data, news group messages, posted by other users. No interface is provided which allows a user to see what other users are currently connected, or what other users have read.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is similar to NNTP in that it allows consumers to post messages and responses in predefined topic areas—called channels in IRC. The main difference with IRC is that the interactions are synchronous rather than asynchronous as in NNTP. Although with IRC a user is often given a list of the other currently operational users, they are not shown any other information about their co-chatters other than the messages they post.
Loom, a visualization tool for Usenet (NNTP) news groups, provides a technique for displaying the emotional mood (e.g., hostile, happy) of an NNTP-based online community (e.g., a Usenet news group) by analyzing the content of its interactions. Although this utility can analyze online interactions and provide a graphical representation of aspects of the interactions, it provides a representation of only one aspect (e.g., the emotional mode) of the online environment (e.g., a given news group). It does not provide a representation of more than one aspect of a given environment, nor does it provide tangible cues indicating the relationship between the representations. (See Judith Donath et al. “Visualizing Conversation” published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Conversation. Volume 4, number 4, June 1999.)
Babble provides dynamic indicators of the presence and activity of all operational users with respect to the available topics (e.g., discussion areas created by the consumers). These indicators are computed using the activities of the participants, such as, connections, postings, and topic switches. Similar to Loom, although Babble provides a representation—one that is dynamically updated—of one aspect of an environment, neither does it provides representations of multiple aspects of a given environment, nor does it provides tangible cues indicating the relationship between the representations. (See Thomas Erickson, et al. “Socially Translucent Systems: Social Proxies, Persistent Conversation, and the Design of ‘Babble.’” published in Human Factors in Computing Systems: The Proceedings of CHI '99. ACM Press, 1999.)
Online games, like chess and bridge (e.g., Chessmaster 6000 by Mindscape, Inc.), provide environments in which multiple users can participate. Although such games provide representations of multiple aspects of the environment, e.g., a view of the current position of all of the chess pieces, along with a view of a timer indicating how long the current player has to execute their next move; no tangible cues are provided linking the multiple representations.
Thus, currently no system or method exists for simultaneously displaying multiple aspects as tangibly linked perspectives of an environment or community. Therefore, a need exists for a system and method for implementing a graphical on-line environment having multiple aspects displayed as tangibly linked perspectives including groups of users and their interactions with others.